He left the US for an internship. Trump's travel ban made it impossible to return

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

55% : As long as the travel ban was in place, a program in Australia seemed viable -- at least initially.
51% : Then the travel ban was announced.
51% : As of summer 2024, more than 1,400 people from Myanmar had American student visas, making it one of the top-represented countries among those hit by the travel ban.
49% : The Trump administration has thrown up new obstacles for international students, from travel bans to a pause in visa appointments and new layers of vetting The first time Patrick Thaw saw his University of Michigan friends together since sophomore year ended was bittersweet.
42% : "I cannot just wait for the travel ban to just end and get lifted and go back, because that's going to be an indefinite amount of time," he said.
40% : While the study abroad program in Australia sparked some hope that Thaw could stay enrolled at Michigan, uncertainty around the travel ban and visa obstacles ultimately led him to decide against it.
30% : One day last June he was interviewing to renew his U.S. student visa, and the next his world was turned upside down by President Donald Trump's travel ban on people from 12 countries, including Thaw's native Myanmar.
28% : He heard speculation that the Trump administration might impose travel restrictions, but it was barely an afterthought -- something he said he even joked about with friends before departing.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.